Episode 324: Charlie Meyer

Episode Transcript
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Fonz Mendoza (00:30):
Hello everybody and welcome to another great
episode of my EdTech Life.
Thank you so much for joiningus on this wonderful day and,
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(00:50):
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mission of connecting educators,one conversation at a time.
So thank you so much for yoursupport and today I am excited
to welcome Charlie Meyer to theshow.
Charlie, how are you doingtoday?

Charlie Meyer (01:26):
I'm good.
You know you said it's abeautiful day.
It's not here in Boston it'spouring rain, but you know it's
all good.
It's a nice day to be inside,kind of do some stuff on Hangout
online.
So I really appreciate theinvite to the show and so
excited to get into it.

Excellent.
Well, charlie, I am excited toget to talk to you because I
know that you and I are both onLinkedIn and I ran into one of
your posts two weeks ago and Iwas just like wow, it kind of
falls in line with how I may befeeling and how many may be
feeling, and looking at some ofthe interactions and comments on

(02:00):
your post, I was like you know,this is a great conversation
piece just to bring up, and so Ijust want to thank you for
joining me here today.
But before we get started, Idefinitely would love to give
you an opportunity to introduceyourself to our guests.
You being a first time guest, Iwould love for my audience to
get to know who Charlie is.
So, charlie, give us a littlebrief background and what your

(02:21):
context is within the educationspace, sure.

Yeah, so I did an undergrad degree in computer
science and math and that'swhere I got my first actual
teaching experience.
So I was like a teachingassistant and that was like
favorite job I've ever hadProbably still better than my
current job, which I do alsolike, but being a teaching
assistant.
So I was helping students withtheir coding projects and stuff
undergrads and that was awesome.
So I would stay up till likemidnight in the being a teaching

(02:45):
assistant.
So I was helping students withtheir coding projects and stuff
undergrads and that was awesome.
So I would stay up till likemidnight in the computer labs
like helping people with theircode or whatever.
So that was a lot of fun.
Spent a few years softwareengineering, covid hit and then
I kind of was just like, oh, I'mgoing to.
So I was living in New York,moved to Boston, where I'm from,
and then I got into teaching.
So I saw like I guess it was aGoogle ad for some teaching

(03:07):
master's program and I was likeyou know what?
I always have wanted to do this.
So I talked to the folks fromthere, signed up, got in,
started with that and thenspring of 2021.
So probably the worst time inhuman history to become a
teacher.
I became a long-term sub in amath classroom locally here and

(03:28):
it was a real eye-opener.
You know I always wanted to getinto teaching and teaching real
students in a real classroom,especially in the chaos.
That was like the end of COVIDthere.
I mean it was a total shock tomy system, but that prepared me
well.
I ended up full-time as a youknow the teacher of record for a
couple of years teachingcomputer science here outside of

(03:49):
Boston and then as a sideproject I started working on
PickCode, which is my currentfull-time job, and that's a
coding platform for teachers touse to run their computer
science classrooms.
Now I'm posting on LinkedIn andtrying to get out there and
market and do all that kind ofstuff.

Excellent.
So, small business owner, youknow, like we said, we're going
to talk a little bit about thatand that you know just, I guess,
putting yourself out there as asmall business owner and not
quite like a founder orsomething like that yet, but you
know it's very interesting take.
I know we talked a little bitabout that in the pre-show, but
we'll get into that.
But definitely want to talkabout this post and we'll
definitely put the link in theshow notes so people can go

(04:28):
ahead and also see it, interactwith it and make it visible for
them to see.
But we talked a little bitabout AI.
Solutionism is one thing thatyou talked about in this post
and about grading being hard.
So let's go ahead and use an AIagent.
Student teacher ratios are bad.
Let's go ahead and use an AIagent.
Student teacher ratios are bad.
Lesson planning takes time.

(04:49):
So that's just to give somepeople a little bit of context,
and that's very small context asfar as what the post is.
But, charlie, tell us a littlebit more about where this post
came from, what inspired it andwhat your thoughts are on AI and
education right now.

Yeah, so this post actually came kind of in
response to me getting yelled atat a conference.
So I was there exhibiting forPitCode.
I just had my booth there withmy laptop and my monitor and I
was showing off the product andthis guy walks up and he's like
oh, have you heard of this kindof AI new thing of this week or
whatever?
And I was like no, I haven'theard of it.
And this guy goes into like atirade about how AI is the

(05:30):
savior and it's going to solveall of our problems.
And on my booth you know mytake, and we'll get into this a
little bit more is, for the veryleast, what teachers need in
terms of the computer sciencespace is just a nice quiet place
for students to write theircode and submit it and get that
off to the teacher.
And one of the things that wedo is, you know, we avoid using

(05:50):
AI there.
So there was a popular toolthat had AI autocomplete for the
student code, which obviouslydoesn't work well.
So yeah, so the poster isactually in response to me
getting yelled at at aconference, which is kind of
crazy.
It's never happened to mebefore.
I was exhibiting, I had mybooth, I had my monitor, I had
my banner and everything.
And one of the things it sayson my banner is that we don't

(06:11):
provide AI autocomplete in ourcoding platform to students,
which is normal.
That's what teachers have askedfor.
There was a platform that kindof has pivoted towards being for
professionals and AI first.
So shout out to Replit.
It's like, yeah, cool company,they're doing cool stuff, but
you know they pivoted out ofeducation.
That's fine, but one of theirpivots was into like kind of AI

(06:34):
vibe coding.
And AI vibe coding doesn'treally work for beginner
students who are trying to learn, you know, their first 10 lines
of Python Just doesn't make alot of sense.
So that's one of the thingsthat says on our banner.
And this person starts accusingme of gatekeeping this magical
technology that's going totransform education.
And he's accusing me of comingfrom this place of privilege

(06:55):
where I'm trying to stop peoplefrom using AI.
And it's like you don't know meat all and I understand that
you're excited about AI, butlike, let's just take a deep
breath, and that's what I saidin the conversation.
You know this guy's kind oflike shouting and so on.
Let's just take a deep breath.
Like I'm not trying to offendanybody, but you know, this is
what teachers have requested isa tool where there is no AI.

(07:16):
For this, you know one use caseand that's what I built and
that's what the company is andthat's one of the things that we
do in our marketing and, like,I'm not trying to, like, ruin
anybody's life here.
It was a very strange situation,but that's kind of where it
came from.
But then you know, you're alsoat these conferences and just
every other booth is a new AIthing and that's frustrating.
I just I don't really.

(07:36):
You know we'll get into moreabout about that kind of stuff,
but I think there's a lot ofplaces where we can just build
technology.
I think there's a lot of placeswhere we can just build
technology, just regulartechnology.
It doesn't have to be AI.
I think there are plenty ofgaps in what teachers need and
we can figure those things out.
And so, yeah, what I said inthe post is right If AI is your
hammer, you know everything's inthere.
Also, make that effect.

Oh, yes, and I think it was just very powerful
because it really falls in linewith what I see and I don't know
.
Sometimes, honestly, charlie, Ifeel like you many times, kind
of like an outlier, and I'm justkind of standing out looking at
everything and I'm just seeingeverything, the hype and, like
you mentioned, you know seeingreactions from people in this
way also as well, the way thatthat gentleman or that person

(08:16):
reacted towards you.
So, you know, calling outsolutionism, you know, is pretty
bold and, like you said, hey,this is what is needed or this
is what teachers asked for.
So I want to ask you here thefollow up.
It's like right now, you know,and I know how I feel about it,
but maybe you see it too butright now are educators being
sold to or are they being heard?

Well, I mean, yeah, you know I'm going to
answer that question, which islike, yeah, I mean it's a sales
pitch and so part of what I getinto that post and you know this
kind of ties into my wholeethos is like I talked to you
pre-show and it's like, oh, I'mnot the founder of Pitcode.
I like to say I'm a smallbusiness owner and a small
business owner is someone who,you know, talks to the community
and figures out what they needand provides a service that

(08:57):
makes sense and, you know, isresponding to feedback.
And that's how I see myself andfounder.
You know, no offense to founders, but a startup is defined by
growth.
So if you read anything aboutstartups, it's are you
compounding month over month,are you growing by 50%?
And that's how you get yournext round of funding.
And growth at all costs isdifferent than meeting the needs

(09:20):
of teachers.
So, like VC stuff in ineducation stuff, stuff to see.
I mean I understand there aresome, you know, very impactful
companies out there that are VCbacked in their startups and
they do the right thing.
So I'm not like calling out thewhole industry, but when
there's this much hype, thismuch energy and this much money

(09:41):
going into one flavor of onething.
I think it's right to beskeptical.

Yes, absolutely no , and I agree with you and, like
you said, there are plenty ofplatforms and right now, like I
said, being in the educationspace, going to conferences, you
do see some of the up andcoming or they're trying to
start something, but then youalso see already who's at the
top and who's really stayingthere, and a lot of it is just,
you know, they're backed bybacked by investors in that

(10:08):
sense, so which is great andgreat for them and what they're
doing and just continuing togrow and grow and grow.
But I want to ask you you knownow being a small business owner
, you know starting up Pitcode.
I want to ask you, as far aswhat you're seeing in your
industry, because you're outthere, you're creating, you're
out there, too, as well why doyou think that so many AI tools

(10:28):
are framed as magic bullets forclassroom problems and what
would you think is the danger ofthis in the future, possibly
for them?

Yeah, I mean, I think you know like a silver
bullet sells, I mean, if yourjob becomes 70% easier, that's
awesome.
And of course, I want to buythat, right?
If I could work two hours a dayinstead of eight hours a day, I
mean sure I'll buy that everyday of the week, but it's just
not true, right?
And I think part of what'shappening with AI is there's

(11:01):
this promise of these scalinglaws and GPT-5 is going to be
better than GPT-4 and GPT-6 isgoing to be smarter than
Einstein.
And I follow a lot of tech newsand all of the reviewers in all
of those videos always say buythe thing based on what it does
today, not what the companypromises it'll do in a couple of

(11:22):
years.
So if there is some greatadvancement in AI, I think AI is
cool.
I use it for, you know, gettingstuff done in my own life.
I put my LinkedIn posts throughAI to see if I had any typos
and, you know, sometimes I findsome typos and that's useful.
But that's kind of what it does, right?
It doesn't, you know, itdoesn't magically solve every
situation and every problem, andI think when you're trying to,

(11:45):
you know, fit a square peg intoa round hole with everything.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.
At least, and I think there'sjust kind of this when you talk
about the hype and you talkabout the over promising under
delivering, I think that's whathappens, is it's like you know?
Hey, you know GPT-6, once weplug GPT-6 into this thing, like
, let me tell you, this is goingto be awesome, but GPT-6 isn't
out.
So why do I need to buy thisthing today?

(12:06):
Because it doesn't actually do.
It doesn't do what it's youknow says on the label.

Excellent, yes, and that's that's what I see a
lot.
You know that's happening.
And, of course, you're people,and especially in education, and
I guess you know this came outand I had Jennifer Manley on the
show.
I just released that episodeyesterday.
Actually, we talked a littlebit about that and her being in
the classroom and her actuallybeing a computer science teacher
and teaching about LLMs and,you know, artificial

(12:35):
intelligence back in 2017, 16and on, you know, doing that.
She's just said like this isthe first time that I have ever
seen like this mass adoption ineducation.
Immediately she says normally,you know she used to work with
writing curriculum and things ofthat sort and really you kind
of like pilot that very slowlyand then you kind of see how it

(12:58):
works, but now it's, you know,november 2022 came out and it
was like boom, like everybody'susing it, and it's that I guess,
like you mentioned, that silverbullet effect of like, oh, now
I can create my worksheets a lotfaster, now I can create 30
questions a lot faster than Iused to, this accurate and does

(13:21):
this fall to the standards andunderstanding like this is like
Dr Emily Bender says it's asynthetic text extruding machine
, which is really, you know,again, going back to a
mathematical equation,probabilities this is what it
wants, and so sometimes I feellike you know that hype was
there of that instant likesolution.

(13:42):
And of course, you know gettinginto the education system and
you know seeing right now theway that teachers are really
battling and, of course, withfunding and not having enough
teachers and enough coverage andclassrooms being, you know, as
big as they are, you knowthey're looking for a solution.
It's almost like we're graspingat whatever we can to help us

(14:04):
but at the end of the day, is itreally helping us really
educate the students or is itjust helping us create more
content that we're just givingto them to kind of just either
keep busy and just havesomething going all the time
rather than diving in deep?
So those are some of the thingsthere that we definitely talk
about and kind of like it's anice segue for me to ask this

(14:26):
next question.
As far as you know, aireplacement or reinforcement and
you know, one of the thingsthat you mentioned here on your
post was, for example, talkingabout the classroom.
If grading is hard, great,let's just get by an AI agent.
Now I can give immediatefeedback.
Student turns in an assignmentand I just let the AI grade it
and give that feedback.

(14:46):
Student-teacher ratios, likeyou said great, let's get an AI
agent.
And lesson planning of course,let's get an AI agent.
So I want to ask you about that.
So where do you draw the linebetween what is helpful
automation and what is harmfuldelegation?

helpful, automation and what is harmful?
Delegation.
Yeah, I mean, I think that youknow, like, ai isn't the first
technology that's come into theclassroom.
So you know, scantron is an un.
There's no arguing thatScantron is a very, very helpful
tool.
When I'm, you know, when I wasa teacher, I used a lot of
spreadsheets to you know,analyze, you know differences
between the grades, between thedifferent classes, and hey, did

(15:29):
I properly teach this topic inthis class versus this class,
like doing some quick math on aspreadsheet.
That's great, like I, I needGoogle sheets to do my job and
it's helpful.
And you know now I don't useScantron, but it was Google
Forms or whatever.
And hey, it's automaticallyshuffling the question over so
students can't cheat.
This kind of stuff is excellent.
So can we think about theseplaces where there shouldn't

(15:51):
have to be an ethical questionaround it?
That's already a red flag ifwe're asking the question at all
and we're doing this based onkind of untested research.
Right, we haven't had 10 yearsof this stuff um being around
where we can do real researchand figure out if this is the
right thing to do.
Um, again, as you say, you know, we're kind of just mass

(16:14):
adopting, uh, this stuff and, uh, you know, mass adopt Scantron.
That's fine because no one'sABCD, there's no student data
privacy issues there.
It used to take me 20 minutesto grade this multiple choice
test.
Now I just feed it into theScantron machine and that's
great.
But fundamentally alteringstudent-teacher relationships by

(16:37):
trying to replace therelationship aspect with some
sort of bot just because it'swell-spoken, aspect, with some
sort of bot just because it'swell-spoken that's where I see
the line is.
If the tool is in any waytouching the student-teacher
relationship, we should betouching that thing with a
30-foot pole.
That's very scary and thatneeds research and that needs to

(16:57):
be tested Stuff.
Hey, you know I generated aworksheet about addition and
subtraction and you know that'scool's cool, no worries.
Like that's not fundamentallychanging the relationship
between students and teachers.
So the teacher facing stuff I'mless worried about.
Um, it's really the studentfacing stuff, um.
So that's what I'm talkingabout in terms of ai.
Tutors scare me, ai assessmentof student work scares me, but

(17:19):
any of these things that arestudent facing altering that
relationship, because thatrelationship is.
In my long two year teachingcareer, what I found to be the
single most important thing isthat social aspect of things.

Yeah, and I think that's very important.
It's that communication, havingthat discussion and, obviously,
as a teacher too, when you doknow your students, then you're
able to immediately improvise,adapt and overcome.
So you have your lesson and, aswe all know in teaching and
I've had that experience whereyou create this amazing lesson
and you're ready for that nextday and all of a sudden, it just

(17:51):
does not quite go according toplan.
So it's just a matter ofimprovising, adapting and
overcoming when you do know yourstudents, and then you can go
ahead and pivot and just sayokay, we're going to go ahead
and change the lesson a littlebit, or also in the way that we
provide instruction.
And that's one of the thingsthat now and I want to go back
to, like the AI agent and theautomation component I have been

(18:12):
having a lot of conversationswith a lot of colleagues of mine
in this space, a lot of peersand so on, talking about them
and the fear for me, and I guessI never saw that consequence
until now.
But I mean, we're talking a lotabout automation and it just
started very slowly and it justkind of creeps in, and even
before AI, where it's like hey,we want this platform to connect

(18:33):
to our Google Classroom.
All right, just for the rawstream aspect, ok, it'll go
ahead and automate that for you.
That's one less task for ateacher to do on their own
manually.
Then all these platformsstarted coming out and say hey,
we integrate with GoogleClassroom.
Fantastic, so now teachers cango ahead and log in, they import

(18:58):
their rosters and it's justseamless.
One of the things that I have aproblem with, or have been
seeing, or not a problem, it'sreally just that concern that I
have is because of just theworld of automation making jobs
a lot easier for teachers is thefact that now the platforms
they assign an assignment, likeyou said, and say, okay, student
submits, they turn it in and ofcourse, that goes into Google

(19:19):
Classroom or whatever LMS youmay be using.
It goes into that gradebook.
Well, that grade book syncs tothe student information system
grade book.
And now it just seems like,well, that's what you got,
that's your grade, and it.
To me it's just like areteachers going back and looking
at those grades and what I'mhearing and seeing is, hey,

(19:41):
whatever you got and whatever itsays in Google Classroom,
that's your grade.
And I remember when I firststarted I had to input stuff by
hand.
So what that did is I wasgrading tests and then I had my
stack of students that maybedidn't do well and I said, ok,
this small stack, I need to talkto these students and see how I
can remediate.
Either reteach or it's aconversation where we have to

(20:02):
fix a misconception and now itjust seems like that, that
disconnect that you're talkingabout in that relationship.
It's like well, I assigned it,that's what you're, that's the
grade that you got, that'swhat's going in Google classroom
and that's it.
Like you, you can't.
Teachers are not asking likehow can I help you?
Let's remediate.
And students are just likewhat's going on here, like I

(20:23):
didn't even get a chance, youknow at all whatsoever.
As you talk about hurtingrelationships, I think that that
is very dangerous and I thinkthat's what we're seeing and I'm
observing and I'm very cautiousabout, because I'm seeing a lot
of my friends who have kidsthat are saying that the teacher
doesn't even bother, you knowgiving a remediation.
Or when I talk to them it'slike, hey, well, that's what the

(20:47):
system gave them, that's whatthey got, and I'm just like
what's going on here?
So, yeah, you're absolutelyright, you know things like that
, even just that basic.
We definitely need to reallylook into that and say, hey, how
can we better our practice?
And now with AI, it's like,well, you turned in an essay to
me that was probably maybe tosome extent, could have been
written with some AI help, butnow you're giving some AI

(21:09):
feedback.
So, in reality, like, who'slearning?
Are we all learning?
Are we giving positive feedback?
So you're just grading what theAI says and we're losing out a
lot of that personal time wherewe can help our students.
And, of course, using this tool, it makes it easy.
It's like, hey, all right, I'mdone, saving me time, but at

(21:31):
what cost?
And that's really what concernsme, and I know I might've
gotten off a little bit on that,but I do want to talk about
that because that's one of thethings that you talked about.
As far as the snake oil, too, Iwant to talk a little bit about
that.
You mentioned, you know, thetelltale signs of an edtech
product that looks innovativebut is built on shallow pedagogy
and empty promises.

(21:51):
So tell me a little bit aboutthat.

I think that getting real teacher experience
in the product development cycleis really like what, what helps
here here?
Because, like, just because youwent to school and had a good
time, you know, and this seemson, hey, you know, oh, I
remember my teacher complainingabout grading.
Okay, well, now we're going toautomate grading.
Um, you know, that seems good,but if you haven't gone through

(22:19):
and actually been in a classroom, um, you know, I I don't really
trust.
Uh, what what you know, yourmarketing website says, and so
it's very easy to market thisstuff, and I think what really
would help us determine whetherone of these tools was good or
not, or was being appliedproperly or not, is the tools
don't know anything about thestudents, they don't know

(22:41):
anything about the classrooms,their matrix multiplication in
some data center, and they'revery well spoken, um, but what
if they had to be truthful?
And at the beginning of everytime it goes, do, do, do, do, do
with that, you know, I know youhad dan meyer in the show and
he made the do do, do, do.
If every time it went, do, do,do, do, at the beginning it says
I know nothing about you, I ama set of matrices in a data

(23:04):
center a thousand miles away.
I don't care about you.
I don't know your name.
For data privacy reasons, I'mnot allowed to know your name
and I don't care.
And then it gave the responseand it was truthful.
In that way, I think that therewould be a little bit of a
difference.
It's like oh, wait a second.
You know, am I gonna?
Couldn't care less whether Igive you a D or an F or a A or

(23:33):
an A plus.
Would you put that in front ofa student?
Because that's what's going on.
It's just not being truthful.
It's skipping that little partof the answer.
So if we forced it to give thatas the beginning of the answer,
would we adopt that tool?
I don't know, but if, when youfed the Scantron into the thing,

(23:55):
it said, I don't care whetherit's A, b, c or D, it's like,
yeah, okay, scantron machine,like that's fine.
So I would respect the Scantronmachine for saying that.
I wouldn't respect an AI tutorfor saying that.
So that's kind of I don't know.
I need to write more kind ofexpand on that at some point,
but I think that's really wherewe should draw the line is is

(24:16):
you know, does it?
If it doesn't care at all,which it doesn't.
We need to make sure that weremember that it doesn't care at
all.

Yeah, no, and I agree with you and I think you
know a lot of these platforms.
It's you know, again talkingabout personalization.
So really, it's taking allthose problems in pedagogy or
pedagogy practice and trying toput them into this AI platform.
Sometimes what I always say is,it may not always work and

(24:46):
because with thatpersonalization, really what I
feel is you're just putting thestudent in a silo, because now
it's just them by themselves ona Chromebook or whatever device,
speaking to this.
You know, matrix, like youmentioned and that really does
has no context of who thestudent is, who the student you
know is coming from, what theirbackground is, or just any

(25:08):
context at all whatsoever, andit's just going to go ahead and
give them an answer and youdon't know whose answer that is.
Whose history is it thatthey're repeating?
Or who are they really talkingto when they say like, hey, I'm
going to talk to Harriet Tubmanand I'm going to ask her about
this, this or that which I know,and I'm going to bring up
episode 319, where Rob Nelsonmentioned digital necromancy and

(25:28):
you know talking about.
You know that that's verydangerous to me too as well,
because you really don't know isthis, is this.
You know really that history,or whose history, is this, is
this, this side, this side, thisside and so on, and whose
version?
And so that's a danger too aswell, because teachers aren't
vetting or maybe not be vettingas well as they should there

(25:56):
that, as an educator, I need toknow what I am putting in front
of the student so that it fallsin line, obviously, with the
standards that I need to teachfor, whatever state I may be in,
because at the end of the day,they're going to go ahead and
get tested on that at the end ofthe year.
So sometimes I feel that withthe tools that we have or that
are out there right now,sometimes we miss out on what we
really need to be teaching andwe go into something that is not

(26:18):
even going to be taught ortested at the end of the year or
just even for a formative orsummative assessment, and so
those are some of the things,too, that we need to consider.
But again, going back to I knowa lot of people always mention,
you know, ai can also enhancebad pedagogy, because, as it is,
if maybe you may be strugglingat pedagogy and now you're

(26:41):
adding this AI tool, then thatcould definitely just heighten
that and just make things alittle bit worse, if not better,
you know, or very slightly,maybe a little bit better.
So lots of things to thinkabout there.
But now I want to ask you asfar as founders are concerned.
Now, I know that you're a smallbusiness owner working with
Pitcode, but, of course, goinginto the space now where you're

(27:05):
going to conferences, you'representing your product,
bringing it out there and, ofcourse, you get to see
everything around you and allthe apps that are there.
But I want to ask you, in yourposition and with your
experience, what would you sayto an AI founder who's never
taught but is pitching tools tofix the classroom?

(27:25):
And I mean, we can get a littlespicy, but a little
constructive obviouslyconstructive here as well.
But what are some of your hottakes there?

Stop, just go sell to someone else, I think is
what I would say.
I mean, like, obviously they'relike I don't want it.
You know, that's the spicyversion of it.
But pause, how about pause?
Pause sounds a little kinderPause for a long time.
Go talk to a hundred or athousand teachers and really

(27:58):
understand their pain.
You don't have to go and teach,that's fine.
Teaching is a really tough job,as we may all know.
If we're listening to thispodcast, it was a little bit too
hard for me to do.
Really exhausting.
I mean, it's just a crazy job.
But if you want to start someAI company, first of all it's
very difficult to sell inschools.
So, just if you're trying tomake the most money, you might

(28:21):
just want to go sell toaccountants, because you don't
have to go through a purchaseorder and approval and a data
privacy plan.
Just go sell software toaccountants, that's going to be
OK.
That's the first thing I'll say.
But also you have to understandwhat's going on in the
classroom for real.
And I think one thing that's alittle tough.
I want to just go back to this alittle bit.
We kind of are talking aboutthis as like what happens in the

(28:44):
doomsday scenario when thesnake oil gets sold and the
snake oil gets adopted, and Ithink the numbers would bear out
.
I'm not sure to what extentthis is happening in a ton of
classrooms, because the teachersthat I talk to they are I've
never.
I mean, part of the reason whywe haven't done any AI anything
on our platform is that I'venever heard from a single
teacher that they want a singleAI anything.

(29:05):
So I mean I have never.
I answer every single customersupport email almost you know,
or actually just hired someoneto do a little bit more support
for us but I answer almost everysingle feature request and I've
never heard a request for anyAI anything.
So I think there's a disconnectbetween the funding and the

(29:26):
investment and the founders andwhat's going on for real in the
classroom.
So one thing that I think islike a positive note is we talk
in terms of what happens ifthese tools that we disagree
with get adopted, but hopefullythey're just not getting adopted
.
That would be my hope, and sofor that brand new person who
wants to go to Y Combinator andstart their startup and
education, pause, pause deeply,take your three months at Y

(29:48):
Combinator and just spend theentire time talking to teachers.
And if you talk to teachers forthree months and they have some
concrete pain points that canbe solved that don't affect the
student teacher relationship andare really there, I don't know
every possible business idea outthere.
I was only a teacher for acouple of years, only ever
taught math and computer science.
So if you can find some painpoints in a real market there,

(30:10):
then go for it.
I'm a little bearish, as marketpeople would say.
I'm a little pessimistic onthat being a you know of those
really that many areas existingwhere you really need AI in
particular, and so I'll just I'mgoing on a little bit of a
tangent.
But on the AI point, I saw thison Twitter and I don't think it
was a joke.
The person said when will therebe an AI agent for reminding me

(30:34):
when someone's birthday in mycalendar is coming up?
And it's like that does notrequire artificial intelligence.
We have had the technology fordoing calendar reminders for
like 50 years.
It doesn't require artificialanything.
It just requires that.
You know, not all of us areprogrammers, but if it's seven

(30:58):
days until the birthday, sendthe email about the birthday.
So you know you could also justdecide to get into ed tech, talk
to the thousand teachers and dosomething that's completely
unrelated to AI.
That's probably a decent way togo as well, because there's
plenty of problems still to besolved.
Not everything has to be AI,and if you talk to any of these,
you know kind of startupaccelerators or whatever they

(31:18):
would say.
Don't start with the technologyand apply it to the problem.
Start with the problem and findsome technology.
So people are doing it inreverse and doing this
completely uncritically.
So don't call yourself an AIfounder and then try and find
some way to slam this intoeducation.
Find some real problem outthere, talk to a thousand
teachers, figure out what theyneed and then go build a

(31:39):
solution to that.
You know those common painpoints.
That's what I would tellsomeone who wants to start a
business.

I love it and I think you kind of already
answered my next two questions,which is great, you know,
because I think that you did itvery well, because I was going
to ask you, you know, what aresome AI startups or what are
some of the things that AIstartups are missing or
willfully ignoring?
And, like you mentioned heretoo, it's just really getting
that teacher feedback.
A lot of startups or foundersare not talking to teachers and

(32:06):
really what they're seeing, andI feel oftentimes is you've had
those major players that cameout, you know, maybe in 2023.
And then all of a sudden, theones that did well have that
backing and are continuing togrow.
What I'm seeing is there'sothers that are coming in and
kind of really trying to do theexact same thing that they are,
but the only difference is isthat they have the backing and

(32:27):
they just continue to grow,while the others are just kind
of off to the side, which, youknow it's very interesting.
Then I've seen where the smallerones, you know, are picking up
more traction because they're,you know, sometimes they say
that you know there wereteachers by teachers.
There's one company that's outthere that they're still
teaching and they're still doingthis, you know, in a similar

(32:48):
way to the way that you aredoing things.
So they're getting that firstperson experience, not only in
the classroom, but using it, asopposed to being far removed and
then trying, like you said,trying to put the tech to fix a
problem instead of finding theproblem to fix the tech and
giving us a plethora of toolsthat we may not really need but

(33:10):
it just looks good, because it'slike you've got a hundred tools
, but do I really need them, youknow, and so those are some of
the things that I see there.
So, again, being very honestand cautious about you know who
you're building for, how you'rebuilding for them, and then
really looking at those blindspots, so how or what would be?
One way, charlie, that youwould think in your experience

(33:31):
that you've had, is one way thatwe can hold these builders or
these founders accountable forwhat it is that they are
creating.

I think to some extent, buyer beware maybe is
what can happen If we just don'tbuy the products, then the
companies don't have to exist orthey'll pivot and they'll do
something better.
So we need to be.
I mean, I have never.
So just to be clear, I havenever purchased a piece of tech

(34:03):
software in my life.
In my classroom the mice werebroken.
In the classroom I went, usedmy credit card, bought a bunch
of mice on Amazon the cheapestones I could find.
So I've never gone through andtried to get a requisition or a
purchase order for anything andI've never been on the buying
end of any ed tech product.
And I know it's toughintegration folks, they don't

(34:25):
want to get left behind andthat's all well and good.
And I don't want to make anyonemad, of course, because I am
selling to these exact samepeople.
So, with all due respect toeveryone involved, let's pause
and think.
Can we get the teachersinvolved in the buying process
and can we say let's pause,let's take this slow.
Is this, you know?

(34:45):
Can we pilot this?
Is there any way that we can?
You know, without paying?
Can we pilot this and see if itactually moves the needle on
any outcomes?
Because if it doesn't, then wedon't need to buy, we don't need
to put in the purchase orderand we don't need to give a
misguided company revenue.
That's going to keep them goingand attract more investor
interest.
I think part of it is that also,just there's so much money

(35:09):
around for the AI type companies.
Me and I run this business andI have tried to get investment.
I have tried to get grants.
I've entered competitions and Ihave lost all of them.
I have not.
You know I'm not like you knowwe're not dying for investors,
but you know I've tried.
And when you see, hey, you knowour next accelerator batch.
What is every single companydoing?

(35:30):
They're doing AI agent for this, ai agent for that.
You enter some ed tech tool.
You know some sort ofcompetition.
What's winning the prize?
It's AI, this AI, that AI, that.
So it's kind of, when theinvestment is all coming in and
it's all pointed toward the AI,it's kind of no surprise that
that's what we're getting, asyou know, the new solutions on
offer, and that's why everyconference booth is filled up

(35:50):
with an AI company.

No, oh man, I agree with you so much.
It just seems like thoseinitials really it's just
marketing.
Artificial intelligence is justreally.
It's just that to me and Ilearned that real quick and I
know sometimes people really getupset, you know, but it really
is.
It's like I remember even justseeing like, oh, you know,
you've got AI, you knowrefrigerator, where now it'll

(36:13):
just change the temperaturedepending on whatever it is.
Or you've got your AI laundry,your washer.
Now, based on how much weightit has, it'll go ahead and go as
long as it needs.
I was like I could just put itin, put in the cycle.
I'm sure my clothes is going tobe clean.
I haven't had dirty clothes ina long time.
And it's not AI, but they justpop that on and it's just like

(36:36):
great, we need to buy it becauseeverybody else has it and it's
just so much of a hype on that.
So I think sometimes we need todefinitely slow down a bit,
like you mentioned, take thatpause and say okay, in the
longterm.
Number one is this company goingto be around based on and my
biggest concern is this, andI've always had this concern
because a lot of the companiesthey plug in to OpenAI or other

(36:59):
APIs that are out there.
Eventually that cost needs togo up because they're producing
so much and people are promptingso much or putting so much
stuff in that.
As that goes up, well, now weneed to adjust prices.
And even in my space that Iwork in, every year it seems
like platforms are going up fromanywhere from 7% to 11% from

(37:21):
one year to the next.
And we get that because it'smore storage that needs to be
used and, of course, they haveto work on amplifying their
servers and whatnot and all thatstuff that goes in the back end
and, obviously, earnings.
You got to pay your people andso on.
But it just really gets scary.
But my thing is I always want toreflect and say am I taking a

(37:43):
risk in getting into athree-year deal with this
company that may not even bearound next year?
And then I'm out that money orsomething may happen with data.
I mean, how, how can I makesure that my data is safe?
More student data, even youknow.
So slowing down is a greatthing, which kind of brings me
to that next segment here that Iwant to talk about is one of

(38:07):
the things that you put in yourpost, which is move fast and
break things has no place in theclassroom.
Move fast and break things hasno place in the classroom.
So what does?

move with care, look like for you.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's agreat point.
I mean I move slowly justbecause I get tired.
I can't work a 16 hour day, sopart of it is just being a
little bit more human about it,I guess, just like this hyper
growth mindset is what's theproblem.
I think and again, I don't knowto what extent this is working

(38:38):
it's working on the investmentside and garnering investment
interest and getting a lot ofcompanies on there with fancy
logos and fancy marketing.
I would hope and I think you'rekind of speaking to this as like
I've got this three-yearcontract with this company Is it
going to exist in a couple ofyears?
And I would be a little bitscared if that company's going

(38:59):
to be around, because I thinkthese are a lot of false
promises that when you have thathyper growth mindset and all
that investment coming in.
And again I say this, I'm notan economist, but I'm on the
ground trying to sell stuff andwhat sells is stuff that
actually solves problems forteachers.
We're going through renewalsright now and teachers are happy
with our software because itactually solved the pain points
for them that they had and itdidn't add weird complexity for

(39:21):
them with a bunch of AI nonsensethat's shipping off their
student data to you know Godknows where data center.
So, yeah, I mean, I thinkgiving back to all of this
slowing down is really aboutrejecting the hyper-growth
mindset and saying what is theproblem that teachers face?

(39:45):
What are the problems thatstudents face?
What are the problems thatfamilies face?
Can we build thoserelationships?
And, from an ed tech providerside, can we build lasting
relationships with schools thatmatter and can we actually?
Are we selling to them or arewe working with them to solve
their problems?
Those are two different thingsand I think if I was an investor

(40:08):
trying to actually make mymoney back, I would bet on the
company that is going intothings with that mindset,
whether it be through havingeducators on staff or whether it
be through carefully workingwith, partnering with districts,
doing pilots, being slow,giving stuff.
Give the software away for freefor a little bit to test it out

(40:29):
and see what happens.
Actually measure outcomes right.
Measure real outcomes.
Something that really drives mecrazy is pointing to a single
anecdotal.
Here's one classroom, here'sone lesson that was enhanced by
AI.
We can talk to Harriet Tubmanand Ben Franklin, who have dead

(40:51):
people.
Oh, that's so cool, and now wehave to buy this thing.
Then he's an interesting lessonplan.
Don't get me wrong, and I'm nota history teacher, so I can't
speak to whether that would bean effective lesson plan or not,
but it sounds cool.
And so you look at themarketing website and says we,
you know, here's a video of 10minutes of amazing engagement

(41:12):
with students talking to ghosts,and so therefore you need to go
and buy this stuff.
That shouldn't be how it goes.
We should be sitting down andquietly and carefully measuring
outcomes.
If you need to do somethingbrand new and untested, you need
to measure outcomes.
Or you can do something obvious, like a Scantron.

(41:34):
You don't need a study to tell.
Like a Scantron, you don't needa study to tell you that a
Scantron is useful.
It's just obvious on face value, it's just logical.
I think if you spent time doinga study on that, you'd be
wasting your time, because it'slike yes, in fact we've measured
, and it takes longer to gradethe multiple choice tests by
hand than it does with theScantron, so that one you don't

(41:55):
need to study.
But on things where you do needto study, you need to study, and
so go and do your study.
So you know the tools, theproblems that we're solving at
PicCode.
We're just making it so youdon't have to email zip files of
code around, you know.
We just automatically have itso that the student's code is
uploaded and runs in the cloudand you don't have to install

(42:16):
anything.
And I feel very confidentdeploying that software into
classrooms without a studybecause it's like, yeah,
uploading and downloading zipfiles is terrible and we don't
want to.
So, like you know, I'm notgoing to do a study, I'm just
going to go on my gut instinctas a person who spent some time
in the classroom, that uploading, downloading zip files isn't

(42:36):
fun and is bad and waste timeand leads to worse outcomes.
That's my gut instinct and I'mnot going to do a study.
But I imagine if a study wasdone we could measure with a
stopwatch and having theautomatic upload happen would
save some time.

One of my last questions here before we get
into our last three questionsthat I always end, and we'll
actually we'll talk a little bitmore about Pitcode too as well,
because I got a questionespecially with vibe coding
being so popular right now andit's like you know, and I get it
, you know, but we'll talk aboutthat.
But my last question to you isand this could be, maybe this
could be that moment, and I knowyou've had some really great

(43:13):
points but maybe there's thisone thing that you've always
wanted to share, or just say, oralways on top of mind but if
you had a mic at an AI andEdTech Investor Summit, what's
the hard truth?
You'd want every founder andfunder to hear about building
their next tool.

Yeah, I mean I've kind of already got into it,
but it's like I don't know.
I mean I don't want to saysomething that's wrong.
So I'm speaking and I'mreviewing what's going on based
on the capabilities of the toolstoday.
So, based on the capabilitiesof the tools today and the way
the world works and the way thatsociety functions, I predict

(43:56):
that these tools have little tono value.
That's the spiciest version ofit.
So, therefore, you are wastingyour time, you're wasting your
money, you're going to lose yourmoney.
That's the spicy version of it.
Now, I think the bet is that thetechnology gets a whole lot
better, and so GPT-6 is nowsmarter than Einstein, right, ah

(44:18):
, okay, well then maybe I waswrong.
So I don't like someone.
You know, maybe someday Pitcodoes a little bit better.
And you know, people want to goback and they want to clip this
podcast when GPT-6 comes outand say, charlie, we're really,
really wrong.
Um, cause, gpt-6 was smarterthan Einstein.
And look at this guy who was um.
You know, there's so manyexamples in history of folks
saying that technology isn'tgoing to work for this and that

(44:40):
reason, and they've proven wrong.
But here I just don't.
It doesn't add up for me, andthis is mostly based on gut.
I don't have a lot of studiesto go off of so, based on my gut
right now, based on thecapabilities of the tools as
they exist with regards toeducation, regards to how
society works and what ourexpectations are for teachers

(45:02):
and the way that classrooms workwith respect to teacher and
student relationships, I justthink these tools are doomed to
fail.
And that's the spiciest versionof it and that's what I'd say.
I'd get up there and I'd saythat and I would look really,
really stupid if GPT-6 comes outand it's smarter than Einstein.
But my bet is that it won't.
And I'm ready to be provenwrong because if it is, if the,

(45:25):
if GPT-6 is smarter thanEinstein, then that's an awesome
world to live in and GPT-6 willsolve global warming and it'll
cure cancer and it'll do all ofthese things and it's you know,
honestly, I'm fine being wrong,I'll be proven wrong and I'll
have some egg on my face andthat's okay, but that's the bet.
So in that room, that's what I'dsay with the mic is you are
betting on, you know, open AI tocome out with a thing that's

(45:47):
smarter than Einstein.
If you bet correctly,congratulations.
You probably made a billion toa trillion dollars.
That's awesome, and if that'snot correct, then you've wasted
everyone's time.
So you know it's a gamble andthat's, I mean, that's what
investing is and that's whatstarting a company is.
To some extent is a little bitof a gamble.
So you know, more power to them, honestly.

(46:09):
But more power to them as longas you're being careful, which
some people aren't doing.
That's where you have to kindof speak up is hey, more power
to you, except wait a second.
You're messing with studentdata, you're messing with
student privacy, you're messingwith student teacher
relationships.
So that's where it's not okay.

I'm with you on that, and especially with the
data components, which is reallyscary, you know, and consent,
and that's a whole other thingthat we didn't get into.
But of course, our focus wasreally just on your post and
just getting your thoughts.
You know, on what it is thatyou're seeing and it's just very
interesting.
You know the experience thatyou had.
And then, just going back tothe experience that you had at

(46:43):
this conference, and you knowand again, this is what I love
about this show that you know wealways bring in both sides and
we just definitely want toalways have a balanced
conversation and just make surethat we all learn from each
other and putting everything outthere.
And so thank you so much,charlie.
And one last thing that I dowant to talk about is obviously
talking a little bit aboutPitcode and as far as this

(47:05):
project that you're working on,this business, tell us a little
bit more about it.
And just for my audience ofcomputer science teachers that
are out there, you know what isit, what is Pitcode, what can it
do, and you know what are someof the benefits.

For sure.
Yeah, well, I appreciate youletting me have a little time to
chat about it, becauseobviously that's my main focus.
So yeah, so what we provide isan online platform for running
your computer science classroom.
So if you imagine it's aTuesday afternoon, we need to
run a coding lesson in Pythonabout converting Celsius to
Fahrenheit, there needs to be aquestion of where is the

(47:42):
software running that's going to.
So they're typing in Pythoncode.
Where are the students typingin the Python code?
How is the Python code running?
When the student is finishedwriting their code or as they're
writing their code, can I seewhat they're working on?
And so we provide the solutionthere where the students as the
teacher, you've created thelesson, you distribute that to
the students, you just clickassign in the system and it goes

(48:07):
out to all your students afteryou've rostered them and then,
as they're typing in real time,you've got a dashboard where you
can see everything they'reworking on and you can
collaborate with them.
You can set up collaborativework environments for the
students where they can worktogether on the exact same code
at the exact same time, and sowe just want to simplify that
process.
So, for a school district who'sgot an old computer lab that
they're trying to get rid of, orthey're switching to

(48:28):
Chromebooks.
You know, there you go.
There's.
Your solution is that you canrun it all in the cloud with us.
And if you're a teacher who'stired of, you know, taking your
students code and hoping thatthey email you the right zip
file or uploading the rightthing to Google Classroom, all

(48:48):
we're trying to do is save youfive 10 minutes a class.
We're not solving world hungerand we're not going to transform
education.
That's why I like to think ofourselves as a small business.
We're not some hyper growthstartup.
We're trying to save five 10minutes.
We're trying to make it alittle bit less frustrating.
Coding is difficult enough tolearn, it's difficult enough to
teach and we want to simplifywhere we can be confident that
we're doing so in a way thatrespects teachers, respects what

(49:09):
they want and, you know, dothat with their input.
So a lot of our focus now.
We kind of built the firstversion of the tool based on my
classroom experience and now wework mainly off of what you know
, our teacher partners andpartner schools ask us to do.
So it's a lot of gettingfeedback, collecting that all

(49:29):
together and coming up with howwe adapt the product from there.

I love it Simple yet effective.
You know, in that sense andthat's one of the things you
know, even when I go do sessionswith teachers, I always say
look, if I can just save youfive to 10 minutes just to, at
the end of the day, turn offyour lights and just decompress,
I think that I've done a goodjob at just helping you with
that, because I don't want toadd more to their plate.
But one of the things that I dolove about this, about PitCode,

(49:55):
is the collaborative aspect,and one of the things that I
have seen slowly, you know, isthe loss of discussion and
collaboration in classrooms,where it has become more of the
teacher being the subject matterexpert and just simply
delivering the content but notallowing students to create
content, but now be able tocollaborate and have that

(50:18):
communication between oneanother in solving code or
writing code together,programming together, and just
the fact, too, that even ifyou're on a Chromebook, this
will work because everything'son the cloud, which would really
save teachers time, and notonly that, but districts time in
having to upgrade their labsand spending thousands of
dollars on the hardware, wherethose thousands of dollars can

(50:41):
be allocated for some biggerprojects and, you know,
classroom maintenance and thingsof that sort and infrastructure
.
But I think that this isfantastic, charlie, and I'm just
so thankful, like because ityou know, for me less is more
and I've always been a followerof the kiss philosophy, which
for me is a little bit differentthan most people hear it.

(51:01):
For me it's just keep it simpleand streamlined, and I think
that PICCode does thestreamlining part very well.
So thank you so much forsharing a little bit about
PICCode.
And my last question I know vibecoding is a big thing right now
and I know you talked a littlebit about it.
And I know for vibe coding, Iknow it's the ability to have
access, to be able to, possiblylike for somebody like me who

(51:23):
does not have a computer sciencebackground, but just to be able
to say, hey, I want to createthis dashboard that might have
this and so on and so forth.
So I know that it gives me thataccess to be able to do
something similar to that, asthough it might not be as robust
as an actual code, but it kindof gives me an idea there.
But I want your take on it asfar as students.

(51:46):
I know you talked a little bitabout it in the beginning,
especially when they're learningPython, that this might not be
good for them.
Tell me a little bit more aboutthat.

Oh gosh, so do we have like 45 minutes to two
hours left to talk?
Because this is really whatmaybe drives me up the wall.
I mean, I just don't.
I feel bad for people who aregetting in this trap that
there's this shortcut where theycan again.
I don't know, I might be provenwrong.
So I want to caveat everythingwith, like I might just be wrong

(52:20):
because the technology justgets so great, but we have to
review stuff and we have tothink about stuff based on how
it exists today, not what it'sgoing to do in the future.
So, as of today, may 10th 2025,it doesn't work.
It's a false promise.
It just doesn't.
You can make an exciting demo,which is cool.
You can create interestingdesigns that's cool.

(52:40):
You can create a somewhatfunctional clone of some other
thing that exists, that's allwell and good.
But so this was actually whatset off the person at the
conference I asked would you putyour banking information into a
website that was vibe coded,would you?
That is a question I wouldn'tOkay.

(53:00):
Well then, does this make anysense at all?
It doesn't right If you want tomake a fun little game or you
want to make a different versionof Wordle or whatever neat,
that is cool.
I'm not going to deny thatthat's cool.
But for serious software, if itwas written entirely by an AI,
I'm going to be very wary.

(53:21):
And I don't think that acompany advertises on their
marketing site oh, this was vibecoded, by the way and it should
say there should be a littlebanner on the top.
If people were telling thetruth, there'd be a little
banner on the top saying thiswebsite was completely generated
by you know a probabilitymatrix in some data center.
Would you like to now enteryour bank information?
And it's like well, wait asecond.

(53:43):
Now, when we think about itlike that, maybe this isn't such
a good idea.
So for games and toys like it'sawesome, it really is, like I
actually think it's sweet.
And so you know, when it comestime for us to demo some stuff
with pick code in terms of itscapabilities, sometimes I'll ask
GPT for 30 lines of Python codeto plug in to do something
interesting.
And in that kind of toyexamples it's neat and no

(54:04):
problems.
But I don't think it's theright way to build systems.
And then, from the studentperspective, I mean just simple
questions.
I think can solve a lot of ourproblems.
Would you teach a third graderhow to multiply with a
calculator?
Do you teach them how tomultiply on paper because it
gives you the fundamentals andunderstand.

(54:25):
You know.
You understand whatmultiplication actually is and
what the process is and why youmight want to multiply, and you
do some word problems and you dothem carefully and then
eventually you get to graduateto use the calculator, and so
it's like the same exact thing,but somehow the AI is just very
well-sp spoken and it's confusedus, um.
And then there is again thecaveat that if it's smarter than

(54:46):
einstein, then I'm totallywrong.
And so that's where it's scaryand that's where that's where
the confusion really comes in.
Is that, um, we've beenpromised by open ai and etc.
That that einstein's coming forus?
Um, if that's true, then yeah,you know, maybe if einstein
wrote the banking app, then yeah, I'll put in my password.
But you know, if it's notEinstein, then I'm a little

(55:06):
worried.

Well, thank you so much for that take, you know,
because that's something thatI've been seeing a lot of, and
some interesting takes like onTikTok and videos that are just
hilarious, you know, and therewas this one gentleman who was
like, oh, you know, he was doingsome vibe coding in a company
and he was like, oh well, I'mdone, you know, he's done for
the day.
He's like what do you mean?
It's like two o'clock, he goes.
Yeah, but he goes.
I ran out of GPT queries that Ican ask.

(55:30):
And he just walks away.
So he's done for the day,because you know that's vibe
coding plan to be able to workall day or something.
But anyway, so before we wrapup and I know we've had a great
conversation, but I always,charlie, love to end our
conversations with the lastthree questions and I always
provide them for you on theinvite.

(55:51):
So hopefully you got to see alittle bit about that, and so I
think that the first one youspoke a lot about possible
edu-cryptonites right now thatyou saw, but maybe you have
another one in mind or maybejust expound on something that
you've already said.
But uh, as you know, everysuperhero has a weakness or a
pain point, and for superman,kryptonite was his weakness or

(56:13):
pain point.
So I want to ask you, in thecurrent state of education or
maybe we'll, we can change it toyou can either say education or
in the current state of ai ineducation, what would you say is
your current edu kryptonite?

yeah, I think that I am um, so it's
interesting because I've soundedlike a skeptic this whole time.
But I'm very easily excited um,which maybe hasn't come across.
But uh, like when I come upwith some new idea for some new
product enhancement to pick code, or I talk to a teacher and we
have one good conversation, Iwant to throw away the plan for

(56:48):
the month and just start workingon that one new thing.
And when we haveresponsibilities to schools and
stuff like that, I have to goand curb that instinct.
So I have one good conversationwith the teacher.
I have to say, hey, wait asecond, we have to slot this
into our product roadmap andlike, hey, we might be able to
do that in the fall.
But you know right now in thespring, where we're working on X
and Y Um.

(57:09):
So curbing that excitement isactually something that I always
need to work on.
Um, and so that you know it'salways it's a challenge for me,
uh for sure, to to kind of stayon the plan and stay focused,
even when there's like kind ofdistractions or exciting stuff
going on.

Excellent.
Number two is if you could havea billboard with anything on it
, what would it be and why?

So this one I would say I mean probably just
like don't take yourself soseriously, and this applies to
myself.
And so, like you know, you see,you know people.
If you go and follow meafterwards, you'll see a very
serious LinkedIn.
You'll see, oh, there's veryserious stuff going on in
education and there I have avery serious, cool new update
for you on this product.

(57:54):
But I think it's important totake a deep breath and say you
know, at the end of the day,what am I doing?
I'm helping kids do theirhomework and if the website goes
down, you know we need to getit back up, but you know kids
are going to be able to take ahalf hour break from class and
we'll get the website back upand working.
And if we don't make that nextsale, it's okay.

(58:14):
And if you know there's someerror, it's all right.
And if I slip and fall on abanana peel, I'm not an idiot.
I'm just gone unlucky that dayand just kind of overall
chilling out and not takingyourself so seriously.
So if you happen to come acrossme on LinkedIn, you will not
get that impression.
But that is something that Itry and work on and focus on is,

(58:37):
like you know, take everythingwith a grain of salt and chill
out a little bit.

There you go, Love it.
I like that.
All right, Charlie.
Last question If you couldtrade places with one person for
a?

day.
It could be anybody.
Who would it be and why?
Can I have two answers?
Yes, of course.
Okay, so if, for intellectualcuriosity reasons, I would like
to trade places with, like SamAltman or someone to figure out
if they actually do have theEinstein coming, because, like
that's, you know, that'sobviously very interesting and I
would like a sneak peek intothat, so that's like,
intellectually, I would like to,you know, just be in the room

(59:16):
there where I can see, sixmonths, 12 months out, is
something actually going tohappen or is this all a bubble?
So I'd like the spoiler alertto that.
But probably what?
Practically what I would ratherdo is just trade places with my
dog, and this is along the linesof don't take yourself
seriously.
Like you have some editing todo, where he would make a noise
in the middle of this podcast,and he just gets to chill, walk

(59:39):
around and, you know, get sometreats.
And you know he just gets tochill, walk around and, um, you
know, get some treats.
And you know me and my wifelike to hang out with the dog
and he's uh, he's well-loved,and he just gets to hang out on
the couch and, um, to someextent I'm kind of jealous of
that.
So, um, that's my, maybe other,uh, that's my other point there
.

All right, well, I'll definitely have to do some
editing there.
As you notice, we saw my camerathat just kind of like slid off
here real quick.

Charlie Meyer (01:00:03):
Yeah, no worries.

Fonz Mendoza (01:00:04):
It's all good.
Like you said, we don't takeourselves seriously, but anyway,
charlie, it's been a pleasure,you know connecting and I know
that you know I just startedfollowing you based on that post
that just popped up, but I'mjust thankful that we did get to
connect.
I'm thankful that you acceptedthe invite here to be on the
podcast and just really shareyour experience, your takes.

(01:00:25):
What you're seeing, and it justseems like everything that you
discussed today also issomething that I am in line with
and, you know, obviously, withthe concerns, but yet there's
still that hopeful excitementabout things.
But it's just really right now.
I'm one of those that reallylikes to take things very slow
to make sure that we cover alldetails Because, again, even in

(01:00:46):
my experience in where I work asa coordinator, looking at apps,
so many times it's like I'malways trying to poke holes on
things just to make sure that weare getting the best possible
product and they're puttingtheir best possible version of
their product out to really help.
So you know that's why it'sjust considering myself a
cautious advocate in those sense.

(01:01:07):
But it's been a pleasure andit's been an honor to have you
here on the show and just tohear your take.
So thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.
And for our audience membersthat are checking this show out,
please make sure that youfollow Charlie on LinkedIn.
Please make sure that you gocheck out PickCode oh, so you
can learn a little bit moreabout PickCode.
And make sure that you go toour website, to myedtechlife,

(01:01:28):
where you can check out thisamazing episode and the other
323 wonderful episodes where Ipromise you that you will find a
little something just for youthat you can sprinkle onto what
you are already doing great.
So thank you, as always, andthank you to all our amazing
sponsors Book Creator, yellowdig, edu8, pocket Talk.
We really appreciate your helpand your support and, my friends

(01:01:49):
, until next time, don't forget,stay techie.
Thank you.

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